N013 A patient satisfaction survey of the telephone advice-line service for the management of inflammatory bowel disease

Background

The telephone advice line (A/L) is essential to offering access to patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The telephone A/L at St Mark’s hospital allows patients to leave a message by voice mail and an IBD clinical nurse specialist (CNS) calls the patient back within the next working day. Previous studies suggested that telephone A/L can reduce hospital admissions. However, little is known of the patients’ subjective evaluation of the telephone A/L service. The objective of this survey is to describe patient satisfaction and to allow nurses to provide telephone A/L services based on individual patients’ needs.

Methods

This survey is a cross-sectional study. Outpatients with IBD who used the telephone A/L between the October 26 and November 20, 2015, were enrolled. An online survey was developed to assess satisfaction of the telephone A/L service. The survey comprises 23 items reflecting the 3 domains and global satisfaction, which were domain1, interpersonal relations of the IBD CNS; domain2, technical skills of the IBD CNS; and domain3, access to the telephone A/L. The overall patient satisfaction, the reason for calling, along with the sociodemographic and medical characteristics were also requested. Free comments regarding the A/L were also sorted based on the content.

Results

In total, 47 (45%) of 105 patients completed the survey online, including 23 males and 24 females enrolled, with an average age of 46. Further, 19 (42%) called to receive treatment or medication advice. In addition, 89% answered ‘strongly agree’ or ‘agree’ that they are satisfied with the service. More than 90% stated that the nurse listened to what was worrying them and that the nurse provided enough time to talk and understood the query being discussed. Patients were asked if they would have preferred to talk their gastroenterologist instead of the nurse, and 62% disagreed with this. In contrast, 23% stated that they were unsatisfied that they could not talk to the nurse immediately, and a further 49% stated that they were satisfied that they could not talk to a nurse immediately.

Conclusion

Overall patients stated they satisfied with the telephone A/L service, and this was reflected in the comments box with the following statement ‘It is so reassuring to have the IBD nurse of the end of the telephone’. The majority of comments for suggested improvements were related to access and timing of the return phone call. Twelve patients in total requested to have a direct line to improve access for urgent queries and to provide clearer information regarding the timing of returning phone call.